Soyuz TMA-03M set for launch to boost ISS crew back to six
By WILLIAM HARWOOD
CBS News
Engineers are readying a Soyuz spacecraft for launch Wednesday to ferry three fresh crew members to the International Space Station, boosting the lab's staff back to six after delays caused by the August failure of an unmanned Progress supply ship.
The all-veteran crew -- Soyuz TMA-03M commander Oleg Kononenko, European Space Agency astronaut Andre Kuipers and NASA flight engineer Donald Pettit -- is scheduled for launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 8:16:15 a.m. EST (GMT-5). Forecasters are predicting clear skies, with temperatures just above zero degrees Fahrenheit.
If all goes well, Kononenko will oversee an automated approach and docking at the station's Rassvet module at 10:22 a.m. Friday, two days before Christmas.
Standing by to welcome them aboard will be Expedition 30 commander Dan Burbank, Soyuz TMA-22 commander Anton Shkaplerov and flight engineer Anatoly Ivanishin, who were launched to the outpost Nov. 13.
"We've been so busy preparing for the mission, it's hard to think too much about Christmas," Pettit said during a pre-flight news conference. "However, our commander on station, Dan Burbank, will probably have the Christmas hats and the wreaths and the stockings hung with care."
Pettit, who holds a doctorate in chemical engineering, said in an earlier interview that he is looking forward to carrying out research aboard the space station, "working on what the purpose of space station is, which is using it to do something meaningful in terms of facilitating human exploration."
Looking at the bigger picture, "I'm a firm believer that one planet is not enough," he said. "I like to say that perhaps the ultimate reason for exploring space can be learned from the dinosaurs. If the dinosaurs had explored space, if they'd colonized other planets, they would still be alive today. So I think this is ultimately why human beings, if we want to live on the time scale of 10s to 20s of millions of years, we're going to have to have our DNA on more than one planet."
For his part, Kuipers, a medical doctor, said he looks forward to a variety of life science experiments, studying the effects of microgravity on human physiology and using the absence of gravity to gain new insights.
"Life science experiments are always very interesting for me personally, but also because they cover a lot of territory," he said in a NASA interview. "I'm going to follow a diet with salt, for example, the SOLO (Sodium Loading in Microgravity) experiment, to see what the effect is on bone loss.
"But we also do psychological experiments to check your reaction time. We look at ... our organs with ultrasound, for example. We take ultrasound pictures, movies of the heart, of blood vessels, even of the eyeball, so that's a nice skill to learn, especially for me. I like these experiments.
"We have strength measurements, we have experiments to see how your endurance changes in flight," he said. "So in a lot of different fields we have these kind of experiments. ... It's a lot of different aspects of life sciences that we cover. So that's interesting."
Burbank and his crew originally were scheduled for launch in September, with Pettit's crew following at the end of November. But the crew rotation schedule was disrupted after a Progress cargo ship was destroyed during launch Aug. 24 when its third stage engine, virtually identical to the one used in the manned version of the Soyuz booster, malfunctioned and shut down before the craft reached orbit.
Russian engineers traced the problem to contamination in a propellant line. Downstream engines were inspected and another Progress was successfully launched Oct. 30, followed by the Soyuz TMA-22 carrying Burbank, Shkaplerov and Ivanishin.
Soyuz rocket failures are rare and Pettit said in an interview he was satisfied with the Russian failure investigation and corrective actions.
"The Russians are good engineers, and they know how to make their hardware, they know how to fix their hardware when it doesn't work right," he said. "But all of this falls in the category of riding rockets is a risky business. If you want to be able to venture into space at this point in time, you've got to ride a rocket and if you want to participate in exploring that particular frontier you just have to roll your dice with the universe and do the best you can."
Asked how his wife and two children viewed risk and safety, Pettit said they know "what I do for a living and these things just kind of come with that and as far as I can tell, everybody's standing squarely behind what I do for a living. That really gives me a large measure of strength so I can go off and explore the frontier."
Kononenko spent 199 days in space as a member of the Expedition 17 crew in 2008. Kuipers spent 11 days aboard the space station in 2002 during a Soyuz rotation flight and Pettit spent five-and-a-half months aboard the outpost in 2002 and 2003 as part of the Expedition 6 crew. He was onboard the lab when the shuttle Columbia was lost during re-entry and he flew a subsequent mission aboard the shuttle Endeavour in 2008.
During his first stay aboard the space station, Pettit frequently downlinked video of intriguing science experiments using everyday items. The "Saturday morning science" sessions, conducted in his spare time, were widely viewed on the internet and Pettit said he hoped to continue the tradition during his upcoming stay.
"Are we going to have a revival of 'Science Saturday?' Yes, we are, but it'll have to be one during off-duty time," he said. "As you know, crews on space station are kept pretty busy doing just the programmatic work and the maintenance on space station. We do have some off-duty time and I plan to use (it) for working on simple scientific demonstrations and I'll downlink them when I can."
One of the highlights of the Expedition 30 crew's stay aboard the station will be the planned berthing of a commercial cargo capsule built by Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, of Hawthorne, Calif. Launch from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida is targeted for Feb. 7.
Three test flights were planned by SpaceX under a separate contract valued at up to $396 million. The first flight was successfully carried out last December when a Dragon capsule was lofted into orbit and guided to a successful splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, the first commercial spacecraft ever recovered from orbit.
The original plan called for a second test flight to demonstrate rendezvous procedures, with berthing carried out during a third and final test flight. But earlier this month, NASA agreed to let SpaceX combine the second and third test flights into a single mission.
Unlike cargo ships supplied by Russia and the European Space Agency, the commercial craft built by SpaceX and Orbital Sciences will be pulled into port by the station's robot arm.
"Both of these vehicles come close to space station and then we sort of have to lasso 'em with the robotic arm and reel them into the station," Pettit said. "We've been practicing the dynamics of how you do that, and we've been practicing that a lot. Once you get these vehicles berthed to station, then it's pretty much a standard ops for any visiting vehicle where you open up the hatches and there's a whole bunch of goodies inside that you offload."
After that, "we fill it full of a bunch of, I guess I'd call them, anti-goodies, or garbage and things we want to dispose of. Then we reverse the process, we unberth the vehicle using the robotic arm an hold it out as far as we can with the arm and then let go of the vehicle."
Kuipers said the advent of commercial cargo ships is the start "of a new era where we have industry, commercial companies getting into the game and into space business."
"And I think this is also the whole idea of ESA, of NASA," he said. "New things should be developed by these kind of agencies because we have to invest, it's risky, you have to find out what is possible, what's not possible. You develop a rocket, you test it and then commercial companies take over, and I think the same thing is now happening with the space station."
Here is a launch-to-docking timeline for the Soyuz TMA-03M mission (in EST):
CBS News
Engineers are readying a Soyuz spacecraft for launch Wednesday to ferry three fresh crew members to the International Space Station, boosting the lab's staff back to six after delays caused by the August failure of an unmanned Progress supply ship.
The all-veteran crew -- Soyuz TMA-03M commander Oleg Kononenko, European Space Agency astronaut Andre Kuipers and NASA flight engineer Donald Pettit -- is scheduled for launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 8:16:15 a.m. EST (GMT-5). Forecasters are predicting clear skies, with temperatures just above zero degrees Fahrenheit.
If all goes well, Kononenko will oversee an automated approach and docking at the station's Rassvet module at 10:22 a.m. Friday, two days before Christmas.
 |
| The Soyuz TMA-03M spacecraft sits poised for launch at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Liftoff is targeted for 8:16 a.m. EST Wednesday. (Credit: NASA) |
Standing by to welcome them aboard will be Expedition 30 commander Dan Burbank, Soyuz TMA-22 commander Anton Shkaplerov and flight engineer Anatoly Ivanishin, who were launched to the outpost Nov. 13.
"We've been so busy preparing for the mission, it's hard to think too much about Christmas," Pettit said during a pre-flight news conference. "However, our commander on station, Dan Burbank, will probably have the Christmas hats and the wreaths and the stockings hung with care."
Pettit, who holds a doctorate in chemical engineering, said in an earlier interview that he is looking forward to carrying out research aboard the space station, "working on what the purpose of space station is, which is using it to do something meaningful in terms of facilitating human exploration."
Looking at the bigger picture, "I'm a firm believer that one planet is not enough," he said. "I like to say that perhaps the ultimate reason for exploring space can be learned from the dinosaurs. If the dinosaurs had explored space, if they'd colonized other planets, they would still be alive today. So I think this is ultimately why human beings, if we want to live on the time scale of 10s to 20s of millions of years, we're going to have to have our DNA on more than one planet."
For his part, Kuipers, a medical doctor, said he looks forward to a variety of life science experiments, studying the effects of microgravity on human physiology and using the absence of gravity to gain new insights.
 |
| The Soyuz TMA-03M crew, departing a pre-flight news conference in Kazakhstan. Left to right: Donald Pettit, Oleg Kononenko and Andre Kuipers. (Credit: NASA) |
"But we also do psychological experiments to check your reaction time. We look at ... our organs with ultrasound, for example. We take ultrasound pictures, movies of the heart, of blood vessels, even of the eyeball, so that's a nice skill to learn, especially for me. I like these experiments.
 |
| The Expedition 30 crew. Left to right: Anton Shkaplerov, ISS-30 commander Daniel Burbank, Anatoly Ivanishin, Andre Kuipers, Oleg Kononenko, Donald Pettit. (Credit: NASA) |
Burbank and his crew originally were scheduled for launch in September, with Pettit's crew following at the end of November. But the crew rotation schedule was disrupted after a Progress cargo ship was destroyed during launch Aug. 24 when its third stage engine, virtually identical to the one used in the manned version of the Soyuz booster, malfunctioned and shut down before the craft reached orbit.
Russian engineers traced the problem to contamination in a propellant line. Downstream engines were inspected and another Progress was successfully launched Oct. 30, followed by the Soyuz TMA-22 carrying Burbank, Shkaplerov and Ivanishin.
Soyuz rocket failures are rare and Pettit said in an interview he was satisfied with the Russian failure investigation and corrective actions.
"The Russians are good engineers, and they know how to make their hardware, they know how to fix their hardware when it doesn't work right," he said. "But all of this falls in the category of riding rockets is a risky business. If you want to be able to venture into space at this point in time, you've got to ride a rocket and if you want to participate in exploring that particular frontier you just have to roll your dice with the universe and do the best you can."
Asked how his wife and two children viewed risk and safety, Pettit said they know "what I do for a living and these things just kind of come with that and as far as I can tell, everybody's standing squarely behind what I do for a living. That really gives me a large measure of strength so I can go off and explore the frontier."
Kononenko spent 199 days in space as a member of the Expedition 17 crew in 2008. Kuipers spent 11 days aboard the space station in 2002 during a Soyuz rotation flight and Pettit spent five-and-a-half months aboard the outpost in 2002 and 2003 as part of the Expedition 6 crew. He was onboard the lab when the shuttle Columbia was lost during re-entry and he flew a subsequent mission aboard the shuttle Endeavour in 2008.
During his first stay aboard the space station, Pettit frequently downlinked video of intriguing science experiments using everyday items. The "Saturday morning science" sessions, conducted in his spare time, were widely viewed on the internet and Pettit said he hoped to continue the tradition during his upcoming stay.
"Are we going to have a revival of 'Science Saturday?' Yes, we are, but it'll have to be one during off-duty time," he said. "As you know, crews on space station are kept pretty busy doing just the programmatic work and the maintenance on space station. We do have some off-duty time and I plan to use (it) for working on simple scientific demonstrations and I'll downlink them when I can."
One of the highlights of the Expedition 30 crew's stay aboard the station will be the planned berthing of a commercial cargo capsule built by Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, of Hawthorne, Calif. Launch from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida is targeted for Feb. 7.
 |
| The Soyuz TMA-03M spacecraft was hauled to the launch pad earlier this week in subfreezing weather. (Credit: NASA) |
Three test flights were planned by SpaceX under a separate contract valued at up to $396 million. The first flight was successfully carried out last December when a Dragon capsule was lofted into orbit and guided to a successful splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, the first commercial spacecraft ever recovered from orbit.
The original plan called for a second test flight to demonstrate rendezvous procedures, with berthing carried out during a third and final test flight. But earlier this month, NASA agreed to let SpaceX combine the second and third test flights into a single mission.
Unlike cargo ships supplied by Russia and the European Space Agency, the commercial craft built by SpaceX and Orbital Sciences will be pulled into port by the station's robot arm.
"Both of these vehicles come close to space station and then we sort of have to lasso 'em with the robotic arm and reel them into the station," Pettit said. "We've been practicing the dynamics of how you do that, and we've been practicing that a lot. Once you get these vehicles berthed to station, then it's pretty much a standard ops for any visiting vehicle where you open up the hatches and there's a whole bunch of goodies inside that you offload."
After that, "we fill it full of a bunch of, I guess I'd call them, anti-goodies, or garbage and things we want to dispose of. Then we reverse the process, we unberth the vehicle using the robotic arm an hold it out as far as we can with the arm and then let go of the vehicle."
Kuipers said the advent of commercial cargo ships is the start "of a new era where we have industry, commercial companies getting into the game and into space business."
"And I think this is also the whole idea of ESA, of NASA," he said. "New things should be developed by these kind of agencies because we have to invest, it's risky, you have to find out what is possible, what's not possible. You develop a rocket, you test it and then commercial companies take over, and I think the same thing is now happening with the space station."
Here is a launch-to-docking timeline for the Soyuz TMA-03M mission (in EST):
DD...HH...MM...SS...EST...........EVENT
12/20/11
00...08...30...00...11:46 PM......Crew wakeup
12/21/11
00...06...00...00...02:16 AM......Crew departs hotel
00...05...45...00...02:31 AM......Batteries installed in booster
00...05...15...00...03:01 AM......Crew arrives at Site 254
00...05...00...00...03:16 AM......Fueling begins
00...04...30...00...03:46 AM......Crew dons pressure suits
00...04...05...00...04:11 AM......Booster loaded with liquid oxygen
00...03...30...00...04:46 AM......Crew meets State Commission
00...03...05...00...05:11 AM......First and second stage oxygen fueling complete
00...03...00...00...05:16 AM......Crew walkout; readiness report to the State Commission
00...02...55...00...05:21 AM......Crew departs for launch pad
00...02...35...00...05:41 AM......Crew arrives at launch pad
00...02...25...00...05:51 AM......Crew boards Soyuz descent module
00...01...35...00...06:41 AM......Descent module hardware tested
00...01...29...00...06:47 AM......NASA TV airs pre-launch b-roll, backgrounders
00...01...20...00...06:56 AM......Hatch closed; leak checks
00...01...00...00...07:16 AM......Launch vehicle control system preps; gyro activation
00...00...45...00...07:31 AM......Pad service structure components lowered
00...00...44...00...07:32 AM......NASA TV launch coverage begins
00...00...37...00...07:39 AM......Suit leak checks; descent module testing complete
00...00...27...00...07:49 AM......Emergency escape system armed
00...00...22...00...07:54 AM......Gantry service towers retracted
00...00...15...00...08:01 AM......Suit leak checks complete; escape system to auto
00...00...10...00...08:06 AM......Gyros ready; recorders activated
00...00...07...00...08:09 AM......Prelaunch operations complete
00...00...06...00...08:10 AM......Countdown in auto
00...00...05...00...08:11:15 AM...Commander's controls activated
00...00...02...30...08:13:45 AM...Combustion chamber nitrogen purge
00...00...01...45...08:14:30 AM...Booster propellant tank pressurization
00...00...01...30...08:14:45 AM...Ground propellant feed terminated
00...00...01...00...08:15:15 AM...Vehicle to internal power; first umbilical tower separates
00...00...00...40...08:15:35 AM...Ground umbilical to third stage disconnected
00...00...00...20...08:15:55 AM...Launch command issued
00...00...00...15...08:16:00 AM...Second umbilical tower separates
00...00...00...10...08:16:05 AM...Engine turbopumps at flight speed
00...00...00...05...08:16:15 AM...Engines at maximum thrust
00...00...00...00...08:16:15 AM...LAUNCH
00...00...08...45...08:25:00 AM...Orbital Insertion
00...03...36...29...11:52:44 AM...DV-1 (93.99 mph)
00...04...28...48...12:45:03 PM...DV-2 (46.12 mph)
12/22/11
01...01...21...16...09:37:31 AM...DV-3 (4.47 mph)
12/23/11
01...23...45...49...08:02:04 AM...AR&D automated rendezvous start
02...00...03...45...08:20:00 AM...US-to-Russian attitude control handover
02...00...08...08...08:24:23 AM...AR&D DV-4/impulse 1 (34.95 mph)
02...00...28...41...08:44:56 AM...AR&D impulse 2 (2.96 mph)
02...00...32...15...08:48:30 AM...Soyuz Kurs-A activation (T1)
02...00...34...15...08:50:30 AM...SM Kurs-P activation (T1)
02...00...51...29...09:07:44 AM...Range = 62.14 miles: Soyuz VHF-2 voice link
02...00...55...31...09:11:46 AM...AR&D DV-5/impulse 3 (31.49 mph)
02...00...56...49...09:13:04 AM...Range = 49.71 miles: Valid Kurs-P range data
02...01...05...22...09:21:37 AM...Sunrise
02...01...18...29...09:34:44 AM...Range = 9.32 miles: Kurs-A & Kurs-P short test
02...01...24...09...09:40:24 AM...Range = 5.59 miles: Soyuz TV activation
02...01...34...22...09:50:37 AM...AR&D impulse 4 (13.86 mph)
02...01...35...49...09:52:04 AM...AR&D ballistic targeting point
02...01...39...02...09:55:17 AM...AR&D impulse 5 (14.29 mph)
02...01...41...50...09:58:05 AM...AR&D impulse 6 (3.53 mph)
02...01...44...35...10:00:50 AM...AR&D flyaround mode start
02...01...51...00...10:07:15 AM...AR&D stationkeeping start
02...01...55...45...10:12:00 AM...AR&D final Approach start
02...01...55...58...10:12:13 AM...Daily Orbit 3 Russian ground station AOS
02...01...59...45...10:16:00 AM...ISS inertial snap-and-hold window open
02...02...02...07...10:18:22 AM...Sunset
02...02...06...26...10:22:41 AM...DOCKING
02...02...09...45...10:26:00 AM...ISS inertial snap-and-hold window close
02...02...16...00...10:32:15 AM...Daily Orbit 3 Russian ground station LOS
02...02...26...26...10:42:41 AM...Soyuz hooks closed
02...02...37...45...10:54:00 AM...Sunrise
02...03...03...45...11:20:00 AM...Russian-to-US attitude control system handover